Steven Kasher Gallery

Brett Weston

New York, NYUSAThursday, October 4, 2012–Saturday, November 3, 2012

New York, NYUSAThursday, October 4, 2012–Saturday, November 3, 2012

Opening Reception: October 4th, 6-8 PM

Steven Kasher Gallery is proud to present Brett Weston. This is the first exhibition of the artist to be
mounted in New York in over 14 years, and one of only two Brett Weston retrospectives to be
mounted anywhere in 35 years. This exhibition seeks to reestablish Weston’s status as one of the
greatest American photographic artists of the 20th century. The exhibition will include over 80 black
and white prints, all printed by Weston, and almost all vintage. It will encompass seven decades, from
the 1920s through the 80s, and will demonstrate how Weston embraced a set of formal themes early
on, and then mastered and deepened them over the years.

In 1925, at age thirteen, Brett Weston escaped school forever and joined his father, Edward Weston, in
Mexico. Under his father’s tutelage he learned how to make photographs, and was soon recognized as
a prodigy. He mastered a formalism that was in some ways more radical – more minimal, less
psychological -- than his father’s. In 1929 Brett became one of the world’s heralded photographers
when several of his prints were included in the seminal exhibition Film und Foto mounted by the
Deutsche Werkbund in Stuttgart alongside prints by Steichen, Abbott, Cunningham, Strand, Sheeler,
Man Ray and Edward Weston.

What followed was over five decades of prolific production, exhibition and publication, a life
singularly devoted to an everyday practice of lyrical and sensuous large-format photography. His work
tirelessly pursues fundamental themes: the intercourse of light and shade on sand, trees, rocks, water,
and walls. He found inspiration in the deserts and coasts of California and Mexico, in the streets of
New York and San Francisco, in the mountains of Alaska and the Sierras, in the vegetation of Hawaii,
and across the towns and villages of Europe. Over all his periods and all his subjects the quality of his
black and white printing is considered unsurpassed.

What followed was over five decades of prolific production, exhibition and publication, a life
singularly devoted to an everyday practice of lyrical and sensuous large-format photography. His work
tirelessly pursues fundamental themes: the intercourse of light and shade on sand, trees, rocks, water,
and walls. He found inspiration in the deserts and coasts of California and Mexico, in the streets of
New York and San Francisco, in the mountains of Alaska and the Sierras, in the vegetation of Hawaii,
and across the towns and villages of Europe. Over all his periods and all his subjects the quality of his
black and white printing is considered unsurpassed.

Weston’s other obsession was women, many of whom he loved, and who loved him back. In the 1930s
he had an affair with Mildred Cram, who memorialized Weston in her screenplay for Love Affair,
which starred Charles Boyer as a lothario based on Weston. The 1957 remake An Affair to Remember
starred Cary Grant, whose style of seduction is said to be close to that of Brett. In a period of desperate
poverty Brett appeared as a swashbuckler in Errol Flynn’s Captain Blood, stealing a scene of drinking
and wenching.

Brett Weston’s prints are housed in over 100 major collections worldwide. Over a dozen monographs
on his work have been published.